It is well known that overheating of electrical components, for instance components mounted on a circuit board, contributes to reducing the life of the component. Overall component reliability is also compromised by excessive overheating during service. As circuit boards become denser and contain components that have higher power output capacity, reliability problems become magnified for solder joints of the circuit board, particularly in “chip” ceramic type parts due to CTE (Coefficient of Thermal Expansion) differences.
The current trend in the industry is to either assume the reliability risk or to institute extremely expensive chip construction processes for removing excess heat. Both practices have proven undesirable from a cost management standpoint.
In a typical electronic package, the largest chip ceramic component, for instance the 2512 resistor, is the least reliable component on most circuit boards and the component most likely to fracture its solder joint due to thermal cycling. The thermal cycling occurs every time the component is used. It would, therefore, be desirable to cool this component during service to dramatically improve its useful life and reliability.
Therefore, a need persists in the art for a system and method of cooling electrical components, such as those mounted in circuit boards, during service that produces a component that is reliable, cost effective and has an extended useful life.